Circle Song

We did a lot of circle song with David. He gets us all singing a repetitive rhythmic kind of backing track and we take it in turns to improvise over it. It's taken from Bobby Mcferrin. Who took it from ancestral African traditions. In many ways it's like what we do all night in The Tent on Mbira camp.

So I'm listening to Bobby McFerrin circle songs on Youtube and I'm starting to think about the possibilities for gathering a group of performance quality singers, maybe a pan-European flexible come and go group, with different constellations of singers gathering for performances in different places

I'm thinking about developing some kind of show that's a mixture of the individual singers' work maybe and some circle songs, and doing some fun playful participatory stuff with the audience, I like that part a lot

I'm thinking about progressive circle songs - I really like the way this one of Bobby's builds so gradually and continually as a whole piece. I'd kind of like it to have some kind of key change perhaps at some point - that's getting quite western, you don't have key changes in, for example, Hindustani (Indian) classical and Shona (Zimbabwean) improvisation-based music. You just have really gradual organic progression within a single key or chord sequence.

Then I'm thinking about the form of Indian classical music, and how you could bring that into circle songs.

You start with the alap - low and slow and arhythmic. The sounds enter like the rising sun; first the gradual, soft lighting of the sky. At some point some way in, the actual sun appears on the horizon. Because of the gradual play preceding it, it's a breathtaking moment, electric like a first touch within chemistry. It's when the improviser reaches the 8th note, (in other words the base note, the tonic, one octave up).

The arrival of each new note is an Event, and one that is lingered upon. Atul described it to me like a road trip. "First you are in England. England is Sa (the 1st). Well you go about England preparing your journey. Then you move - and it is a journey - over to France. France is Re (the 2nd). Now you're in France, do you go straight to Germany? Germany is Ga (the 3rd). No! You stay in France. You play for a while, visit some friends. You play around the edges. Then when you arrive in Germany, it is quite an event!"

And so on. And all the while, softening, softening into the music, softening into the experience of letting the music sing through you rather than you pushing and forcing it out of you.

So that's Alap.

Then a beat comes in. It's low and slow. You improvise but every 12 bars or something a little repetitive phrase comes in that marks the kind of corners that are emerging within your form. Your improvisation stays mellow but moves from the arhythmic quality of the alap to a rhythmic quality in resonance with the beat.

Next the beat quickens. Your improvisation does too. The drummer gets more playful. So you do you. You rise together; the pace, the speed of your sonic movements, the tones, rise rise rise until you reach your first climax.

Next, the intensity goes back down half way. Now enters a melodic composition. It will be a little thing, maybe 8 bars, maybe 16 or 32. You'll sing it a few times over. Then you'll start to play with it. You might sing bars 1 - 4 of the composition, then improvise for 4 bars, then come back for bars 5 onwards. Next round, you might improvise for four bars between bars 4 and 5, and four bars between bars 12 and 13. Then you create bigger gaps in the composition for your improvisations, and more of them, then more and more, until the composition is literally in shreds, tiny strips that give a thematic kind of fiber to the improvisation, and you can whip and weave them around each other. By this point both the melodic soloist and the drummer are going crazy, improvising with wild abandon, beyond all control, yet still within the form and feel of the music, until the final peak is reached, and gradually like the slowing and softening after orgasm, the music moves towards the still intimacy of silence.

I wonder if it's possible to weave some elements of that musical form into circle song. With the right group of people. I wonder who those people would be.

David Eskenazy Rocks

I've just come back from the most rockingest week long vocal improv workshop in the south of France with David Eskenazy. All I want to do now is sing.

He's got a teaching style that is both artistic and practical, free and rigorous, which pushes you to your edge then lets you fly. And as a musician, vocally and instrumentally, he rocks out.

I'm going to study with him for a year.  I've cleared ten hours a week in my diary. I want to clear more.

Be warned though, his advanced workshops are not a space to get comfortable with vocal improv, they're a place for those already comfortable with it to really stretch themselves. If you're interested and just getting comfortable with public improv, go for the intermediate and beginners levels.

I'm going to help him organise some workshops in London. Watch this space...

International body music festivals...

The first was in San Francisco. The second was in NYC. The third will be in Sao Paulo this autumn. The fourth?

Barbatuques

Max Pollak

I am a ritual singer

It became very clear to me, theoretically, two months ago. It became very clear to me, practically, on Saturday.

I am a ritual singer.

A ritual singer, as I understand it, does two things.

1. Holds group singing in rituals. Eg, Wassail songs in a mid-winter orchard blessing. Congregation singing to welcome the bride at a wedding. And so on. And, in doing so, helps to create a very special atmosphere.

2. Singing, usually improvising, usually with other musicians, to contribute to the atmosphere of a ritual. I did this for the first time, more or less, in a Sufi whirling workshop / ritual on Saturday.

source

People seemed to love it. I loved it. Singing as a gift to people who are active, doing something, going through something - going through something quite magical, even - contributing to the aliveness of a shared experience is for me so On It, in the same way that singing alone to a lot of people just sitting there listening isn't. Also, when you sing for ritual, it's not about you, it's about the experience of the people in the ritual. I'm really comfortable with that, in the way that I'm not at all comfortable with all the attention and fuss that's on you as a regular performing singer.

I hope I'll sing with the Sheikh again. He's a Dude. I'm a ritual singer. Done! Ha! :)

I still haven't figured out what ritual actually means, though, really...